Wireless communication networks typically include wireless communication devices which, via a wireless access node, communicate with further communication networks and equipment. Recently, a growing demand for mobile high speed data transfers has resulted in the publication of several internet protocol (IP) mobility protocols as standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). These mobile IP standards attempt to solve the problem of a wireless communication device roaming within a network by providing location-independent routing of data packets.
Using mobile IP, a wireless communication device is associated with a home wireless network and an anchored home IP address. The home wireless network includes a home agent that stores information about the wireless communication device. When the wireless communication device roams into a foreign wireless network, the device is associated with a care-of-address which identifies its current location, and the home address is associated with the local endpoint of a tunnel to the home agent. Mobile IP specifies how a wireless communication device registers with its home agent and how the home agent routes packets to and from the wireless device through the tunnel.
Simple IP is another IP mobility standard. Unlike mobile IP, simple IP does not require routing packets through a tunnel to a home agent of a wireless communication device. Instead, under the simple IP protocol, a wireless communication device receives a dynamic IP from a local packet data service node (PDSN) in a visited wireless network and the visited wireless network provides a direct routing service for the wireless communication device. In the simple IP protocol, a wireless communication device must obtain a new IP address (and lose existing connections) every time it changes its point of attachment. Thus, when the wireless communication device moves from a coverage area of one PDSN to another PDSN, a change in the packet data session occurs when a new IP address is assigned by the new PDSN.
Overview
A wireless network authorization system receives an authorization request for a wireless communication device transmitted from a visited wireless network. A processing system selects one of a simple internet connection and an encrypted internet connection for the wireless communication device in response to the authorization request. The communication interface transfers an authorization response for delivery to the visited wireless network indicating the selected one of the simple internet connection and the encrypted internet connection.